Eternal Night
by twifanannika
Summary: They both lost something important that day: she lost her memory and a possible future, he lost his wife. Can they ever be whole again? With time… who knows! PS: Title and summary might suffer changes as the story evolves. DIS: I don't own, make money or am affiliated to anything Twilight Saga related. ENJOY!
1. Preface

_A Bella/Carlisle story that follows (or not) the narrative line of the four books._

_Some extracts from the Twilight Saga (descriptions/dialogs/actions) will be used after being adapted to fit this story's plot._

_I have no Beta reader and I'm not a native English speaker so if you happen to find any mistakes (which I'm sure you will) either ignore them or point the out to me so I can make the necessary corrections._

_If you consider Bella not dating Edward a sacrilege then maybe you shouldn't read this story._

* * *

** PREFACE  
**

Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting and for a second there I actually wondered if there was another car involved, a car that did hit its intended target, but as my head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something unwinding, hard and cold pinning me to the ground I gave up thinking completely. If this was the end – and I suspected it was – what use could thinking of it really have?

So I did the only thing I could… I concentrated on seeing and feeling without rationalizing it. I could see I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to, the van still coming, curling gratingly around the end of the truck and, spinning and sliding, ready and willing to collide with me again – to finish its task - and that someone was with me. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van's body.

Then his hands moved so fast they blurred. One was suddenly gripping under the body of the van, and something was dragging me, swinging my legs around like a rag doll, till they hit the tire of the tan car. A groaning metallic thud, which I seemed to feel all the way to the pit of my stomach and beyond, hurt my ears, and then the van settled exactly where, a second ago, my legs had been, glass popping and raining, onto the asphalt, me and my yet unidentified savior.

It was absolutely silent for one long second before the screaming began. In the abrupt bedlam, I could hear more than one person shouting my name. But more clearly than all the yelling, I could hear Edward Cullen's low, frantic voice in my ear.

"Bella? Bella?"

"I'm fine." My voice sounded strange – groggy and labored in a way a near death experience, even one of this magnitude, shouldn't have made it sound.

I tried to sit up.

I couldn't.

For an instant I thought that he, my knight in fucking shining armor and the one and only Eros as well as bastard of Forks High, was holding me down, against the side of his body in his inhumanly strong grasp; a grasp that almost hurt too much to think about. I wanted to scowl and yell for him to let go, because he was hurting me, but then I suddenly felt it… his hands moving frantically over me. He wasn't pinning me to the ground and the car behind us. His hands weren't keeping me down, something else was though... something that hurt in a way I never thought anything could hurt…

And when I looked down, at the place where fire and ice seemed to mingle to form pain the likes of which I never before even entertained the thought of, I could see why… Why I was still pinned to the cold, hard asphalt and the car behind me… Why Edward Cullen couldn't lift me up, though he was doing a hell of a job trying… Why suddenly I couldn't breathe right and everything seemed to darken… Why it all hurt so much I actually lamented that the car – cars, whatever – didn't finish the job…

There, in a mass of blood, bones and tissues, a sharp-looking, blood-glistening piece of metal stuck out right in the middle of my stomach.

* * *

_**TBC...**_

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_There's no update timeline, but I'll try to post at least one chapter each month!_


	2. One

**O N E**

**(Dreams)**

_ CC_POV_

Dreams…

I haven't had those in so many years I hardly recall how they felt like and yet now, as I stood in the middle of the woods, glaring into the furious fire that was burning my life to nothingness, ashes and dust, wishing for the first time in God knows how many years that my tears hadn't dried out the moment I was turned, I couldn't help but wish – no, not wish… yearn – for this, everything from that moment I've given my last breath and then woken up into my afterlife until this very exact moment in time, to be nothing but simply a dream – a nightmare, an abomination of fantasy and a sick, oh, so sick, imagination of an oh, so sick mind.

It wasn't thought…

I wished with all my all that it was, but it wasn't.

There were no dreams in my world, no nightmarish abominations and no fantasy to speak of.

There was only reality. A reality so nightmarish that even the most twisted of minds could not think of it, one that featured death, blood and gore as its main characters and one that held this moment, this very moment when everything that I have ever treasured turned to smoke, as the pinnacle of it all.

I hated it… my reality… my life… my existence – hell, right now, I even hated the woman whose ashes I was mourning over. I hated my family… this town… the ruthless vampires that took her away from me… myself… the irritating ringing sound that I ignored yet again, just as I did the other twelve times it rang loud and clear over the whooshing of flames and the crackling of burning marble-like broken body parts.

I hated it all and still, I couldn't find it in myself to do it: to take that small, almost invisible, step and join her.

I couldn't die – if dying was even the word for what one as me did when his time to walk the Earth in afterlife came to an end. Maybe it was something simpler than dying; something like disappearing in thin air, finishing being or simply ceasing to exist. And yet no matter what it was, no matter what we, vampires, did at the end of our life – or better said, at the end of our afterlife – I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Not now… Not when I've tasted life, real life, in death because of her… and them. Not when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that thought creatures of death and evil in our essence not all of us were death or evil or for that matter, even monsters.

I couldn't die.

A too long-time un-beating heart wouldn't let me, a soul I long ago thought had deserted me stood in my path and I just watched them stopping me without even one word of protest, because no matter how much I wanted to, how terrible I ached for it or how much I craved to be with her in nothingness, I knew that in the end I would never be able to do it. I would never be able to die, not from my own doing and certainly not now. I still had too much, much too much, I could, needed to and would live for: I still, even now, when the night seemed the darkest and the clouds the most ominous, had them and for them, for the family I loved with all of my dead heart and soul, I couldn't bring myself to die.

For them I was going to live, even if living was pain and sorrow and death, and even if living was going to be from now on without her, my wife… my Esme… I was going to live…

I don't really know how much time passed, the word itself losing all meaning sometime just after raging flames engulfed Esme's broken body completely, but when the phone rang for the twenty-sixtieth time – the only thing I actually kept track of as I stood and watched my wife's body turning from stone to ash – and pressed it to my ear, looking and seeing the world around me for the first time since arriving in this part of the forest, it was to find dying coals where dancing flames had stood, twilight lights instead of the gloom sunshine I was expecting and a frantic voice screaming on the other side of the line.

"Carlisle – Bella… so much blood… and Edward… and…"

I didn't wait to hear the rest of her words.

I couldn't wait to hear the rest of the words, so before I even knew what I was doing, I was already running away from the now almost completely burned out fire, the phone already dialing, my mind, heart and soul focused for the first time in what seemed like an eternity on one thing and one thing alone: the fact that my son needed me. I haven't even sensed Rosalie and Jasper near until I saw them running alongside me as I cursed and prayed at the same time that Edward would just pick up his damn phone.

_AC_POV_

When night gave way to the first rays of sunshine on that particular morning the future had looked as normal as it could ever be for a family of vampires living amongst humans in the smallest of towns in the cloudy and rainy Olympic Peninsula. No human was to suspect anything about our true nature, Carlisle and Esme were to spend a lovely hospital-shift free day hunting and we, the 'kids' of the family, were to go back to school as we did on any other not too sunny day, act as we have always did and pretend that being juniors, in my and Edward's cases, or seniors, as Rosalie, Jasper and Emmett's roles were this time around, for the sixteenth time wasn't actually boring us to death – as if we weren't dead enough to begin with – so all in all, simply another normal day in the monotone endless existence of vampires in Forks.

And if the future changed somewhat, as the shadows of night were completely pushed beyond the horizon while the newest of days crept from over the forest and into our lives, I paid it no mind. I was too busy being the future-seeing un-dead one hundred and three year old vampire pretending to be a sixteen year old human teenager to give it a second thought. Besides, the changes were so minor – like Carlisle being called back to the hospital on an emergency and some nomads passing through our lands – that it seemed completely unimportant at the time.

And if, as the day progressed from dawn to morning and our daily routine began, things changed once more – just slightly, almost unnoticeable – and I ignored it once again, it was only because Jasper was keeping me way too busy to give it much thought. But it didn't really matter – I told myself at the time – because it was nothing important, life altering or deadly. It was simply the small decisions, those that meant nothing in the big scheme of things, which were changing. They, it, didn't mean anything and it was only natural to ignore them.

But as we got to school, after what would have seemed like an eternity to any human, never mind us, of Emmett's horrible 'knock-knock' jokes – his new 'guilty pleasure' – and the visions stared changing again, with such speed I felt my head ready to burst from a pressure I knew it couldn't be pain – vampires didn't had headaches – yet it sure felt like it, I knew, just like I knew that it was January, Tuesday the 25th, that I've been the worst kind of an idiot to ignore everything I've seen that day.

It had been important… more important that I could have imagined it and I did nothing.

Well, no more!

The phone was already out of my pocket; Carlisle's number dialing as I held it to my ear; when the first clear vision of the last couple of minutes – an eternity for one of our kind – hit me like a ton of bricks.

"Esme," I gasped into the phone even as Carlisle's voice came through the line that went dead so fast, I had to wonder if I've really heard the call get through and not just imagined it all.

But I couldn't stop to think. I couldn't stop to analyze it or anything else.

Not now… Not when vision after vision came almost strong enough to knock me off my feet – if I wasn't a vampire that is – with images I wanted – needed, prayed to entities I long ago lost faith in – to be nothing but some sick, twisted dreams of a creature who hadn't dreamt in a century. Then again, maybe it was all a dream; everything from the time I got send to that awful asylum because I was nothing but a freak of nature to the here and now, and this visions that couldn't – simply couldn't – be true. Maybe it was…

But it wasn't. No matter how much I wanted, wished or even prayed for it… it wasn't. This was real; so real I could almost feel the heat from the fire Carlisle was standing by, taste the bitter ash on my lips and experience the agony Esme would or maybe even had already experienced.

From somewhere behind me, I could hear Edward's answer growl to the vision he'd just witnessed in my mind. I didn't care; I had my own grief to deal with and a ton of new visions forming at the edge of my mind that I couldn't ignore again. He could do his own thing – tell the others what I've seen and maybe run to the rescue. No matter that it was already too late and that even Carlisle, who had been closer that we were and probably ten times more motivated in his love and desperation, hadn't gotten there but after the fact.

I didn't care. I couldn't care… when vision after fucking vision showed me Carlisle jumping into the flames to be with his mate, Bella Swan's bloodied body – a mash of bones, flesh, blood and metal – hanging limply and dead from Edward's just as bloodied arms, a car skidding to a stop in the middle of nowhere with my brother's form jumping out of it and running so fast that even my vision made him a blur, Jasper's blood-red eyes staring at me with such longing it would have made my heart stop were it still beating and then pain, so much pain I thanked the Gods I wasn't actually living, because this pain, this agony that in my visions was ripping the family apart, was sure to kill anything living.

And then, just as the swam of visions finally stopped and my entire focus came back to the present I saw it… the car sliding too fast, the blur that signaled a vampire, Edward, running and Bella's fragile frame just instants away from being squashed.

_BS_POV_

When I opened my eyes in that morning, something seemed different about the atmosphere of the room. It was the light; a brighter light than I've ever seen since first setting foot in Forks too long ago to actually remember and then again since some days ago when I moved out here for good. It was still the gray-green light of a cloudy day in the forest that I wish I could say I got accustomed with yet didn't, but it was clearer somehow.

I jumped up to look outside, and then groaned in horror as a fine layer of snow covered the yard, dusted the top of my truck, and whitened the road. And that wasn't even the worst part of it. All the rain from yesterday had frozen solid — coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway look like a deadly ice slick. But then again maybe it only seemed that way to the almost handicapped girl that usually had more than enough trouble staying up on her own two incredible left feet when the ground was dry and completely ice free. I could almost imagine myself on that ice and it wasn't pretty.

Charlie had left for work before I got downstairs after I debated with myself for what seemed like hours, though it were only minutes, about the benefits of skipping school on a day like today and spending it in bed. My conscience won – it always did somehow – so I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice directly from the carton, making a mental note to get some more when I got back from school.

I felt excited about going to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends – I didn't actually had a set of friends, though Angela, Mike and Eric were sure nice to be around. If I was being honest with myself, and I tried to be almost all of the time, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen again. And that was very, very stupid.

I should be avoiding him entirely not get excited about the prospect of another Biology class with him. The man – boy, whatever – was a right douche as Grandma used to say, so why was I even thinking about him?

Sure he was hot, but so were his other four siblings and half of Hollywood and I wasn't jumping out of my seat for them. And yes, he had a voice to die for and then some, but that didn't mean anything. He was still a right idiot – well, an incredible smart idiot, but an idiot never the less – and I was still suspicious of him. I mean: why lie about something so innocent like his eyes? Not that those particular eyes had anything innocent about them – they were positively sinful. But again, that didn't actually matter. What did matter was that Edward Cullen was too fucking perfect, too fucking suspicious and too fucking frightening for me to be this excited about seeing him. Hell, I shouldn't be excited at all, but terrified – he gave me the creeps.

It was kind of refreshing after Edward Cullen related thoughts to focus every ounce of my brain power on making it down the icy brick driveway alive. I almost lost my balance when I finally got to the truck, a stray thought of how his eyes looked just as perfect black as they did golden, but I managed to get myself together fast enough to cling to the side mirror and save myself. Clearly, today was going to be nightmarish and if I couldn't – wouldn't – stop thinking about Edward fucking Cullen I just might not survive it.

Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Edward Cullen by thinking about Mike and Eric, and the obvious difference in how teenage boys responded to me here. I was sure I looked exactly the same as I had in Phoenix. Maybe it was just that the boys back home had watched me pass slowly through all the awkward phases of adolescence and still thought of me that way. Perhaps it was because I was a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between. Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress. Whatever the reason, Mike's puppy dog behavior and Eric's apparent rivalry with him were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer Phoenix were being ignored was just another day of high school.

My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads and I was more than thankful for that, because really, the last thing either me or Charlie needed right now was for me to crush the truck and for him to be called to the scene. So I drove very slowly, not wanting to tempt faith and have my Chevy carve a path of destruction throughout Main Street.

It wasn't until I got out of my truck at school, that I saw why I'd had so little trouble. Something silver caught my eye, and I walked to the back of the truck — carefully holding the side for support, I wouldn't want to screw it now after everything went so well since leaving the house — to examine my tires. There were thin chains crisscrossed in diamond shapes around them.

Apparently Charlie had gotten up at who knows what insane hour in the morning to put snow chains on.

My throat suddenly felt tight and I started struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on, when almost out of nowhere I heard this odd sound like a high-pitched screech that was fast becoming painfully loud.

I looked up, startled and saw several things simultaneously.

Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, next to his family, staring at nothing in particular with a look of horror on his face. Alice Cullen's gaze was so lost she looked as if she were in some kind of a trance. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot.

It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them and I…

I didn't even have time to close my eyes before the nightmare, because it could only be a nightmare and not reality, broke lose.

_CC_POV_

If I were still human I would have been dead or at least unconscious by now. The pain my dead heart was going through, the running, the obstacles I refused to dodge, knowing they were no match for a vampire, all of it would have killed me, or at least brought me to my death bed by now. But I wasn't human and I hadn't been in so many centuries that dying was no longer a concern to me. The concern, my only concern, was the man – the one hundred year old vampire – that now stood in front of me covered in the sweetest blood I have ever sensed, staring at me with hunted crimson eyes.

He'd done it. My son, the one I was the proudest of them all, the one who could never do anything wrong because we was just too good for it, had done it. He had killed and I hadn't been there to stop him.

"I," he started to say and I felt my gut clench at the horrifying tone his voice had; a tone I could remember so well from all those years ago, "I… She… I…"

"Edward?" I almost forgot about her… Rosalie and Jasper too, my other son and daughter, standing beside me, looking with horrified eyes at the vampire before us. They knew, just as I did and still I could sense the question in their gaze, feel the uncertainty in their stance. We all wanted it to be a dream, I was just as sure of it as I was of the all-consuming hole in the middle of my chest, where Esme used to be.

"I… She's not dead…"

"You TURNED her?" The screech was so Rosalie that I cringed.

She was a force; a hurricane, an avalanche, an earthquake and a tsunami all wrapped up into one beautiful beyond understanding vampire and that was on her better days, but now, as she stood facing her brother in venom and arms for the last eighty years, I feared, truly feared, that by the end of the second we all seemed trapped into awaiting for Edward's answer, I would mourn not only my wife, but also the end of a son.

"NO… No, I… I didn't… I…"

"He's in shock," said Jasper just as a wave of calmness that had nothing whatsoever to do with the torment I felt inside, rushed over me… over us.

"I'm not… I'm…"

"Edward?" My voice seemed weak and small with fear, and I knew that even though I kept away from my own thoughts, managing to ignore the torrent of images invading my mind and concentrating on Edward and Edward alone, he wasn't as lucky. He could hear me. Hear the uselessness I felt by just looking at him; see the nightmarish images my brain kept supplying. And it wasn't only me he could hear. He could hear all of us; all our thoughts and misery and despair.

"I… I didn't bite her!"

Were I still human at that particular point in time, I would have collapsed in relief.

He didn't… He hadn't… Merciful Father he hadn't killed her, and yet his eyes and all of the blood that kept dripping from him to the white snow at his feet, distracting us all too much to concentrate on little except the ambrosia like aroma it had; all of that told a completely different story.

"I… She was going to die… crushed by an out of control van and… I had to do something, had to stop it all…"

"Then why is her blood…"

But Rosalie didn't get to finish her question because suddenly the lost little boy – no matter how old of a vampire he was, until now Edward had been nothing but a lost little boy since the moment we reached him – turned into the beast we all kept hidden inside us and started screaming.

"Because I fucking speared her in my rush to save her, that's why. And then… Do you know what I did then? I feed… I fucking feed on her blood as it poured out of the wound and… and I didn't even care that she, or anybody else for that matter, saw me, because I never tasted something more sublime than that her in my life and I wouldn't – not couldn't, but WOULDN'T – stop even if my existence depended on it."

"How," said Jasper probably more as a way of getting his attention than anything. With Edward speaking was just as useless as breathing was to us.

"How… your fucking Little Freak, that's how." Japer growled, but Edward paid him no mind. "She… she… had a vision and," - his eyes shifted from Jasper to me and just beyond the beast that was still controlling him I saw humanity in the form of so much remorse I felt my breath – something I haven't needed in centuries – leave me completely breathless – "… I couldn't do that to you!"

_EC_POV_

"… I couldn't do that to you!"

And I couldn't.

Not matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't kill her. Even if he didn't understand it yet, I couldn't take her away from him. Carlisle would need her, just as much as she already needed him. And that was why and how when I was already lost in the frenzy of Bella Swan's blood, the most exquisite blood I ever taste and will probably ever taste, I somehow found the necessary strength to stop myself, to let her live.

I did it for him and if Alice's visions were anything to base my decisions and life on, and they were, Carlisle might just make it out of the darkest time of his entire life and afterlife, because he would still have her. He would have his dream afterlife and happily ever after, just without some of us there to see it happening.

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_**TBC...**_

* * *

_There's no update timeline, but I'll try to post at least one chapter each month!_

___I have no Beta reader and I'm not a native English speaker so if you happen to find any mistakes (which I'm sure you will) either ignore them or point the out to me so I can make the necessary corrections._

_**And... by the way... is anybody interested in beta-reading this story for me? Just say so in a review or PM if you are and I'll get in touch with you in no time at all.** _


	3. Two

**TWO**

**(Thoughts)  
**

_ BS_POV_

It hurt.

God all mighty, did it hurt!

It hurt so much I wondered for a second why was I feeling it at all. Wasn't this kind of pain supposed to leave me unconscious? If it was, it was doing a fucked up job of it, because I was much too conscious and alert. I knew where I was – or I could make a pretty good assumption that the smell of hospital combined with the sound of sirens equaled ambulance; I knew who was with me – a nurse, a doctor who even told me his name though I could care shit about it right now and my father, my frantic, cursing, shouting, crying father and I knew what was happening to me… I was dying and taking my sweet time with it.

I hurt so freaking badly that I even started to pray at one point, though what I was praying for exactly was still a mystery to me. I seemed to switch from 'God let me live through this' to 'please just kill me already' with such speed I was giving my brain whiplashes and those in turn made me hurt even more and I still got no answer.

There were needles sticking out of my arms. I didn't really see them; I blacked out somewhere after I saw Edward Cullen liking blood from my wound and just before feeling myself lifted off the cold, wet asphalt and I was still somehow of out of it. I could hear, feel – which I hated with every single agony screaming cell of my body – even rationalize what was happening to me and around me and I hated God, Edward fucking Cullen, Phil, mom, dad and every single person on the face of the planet for it. I wanted sleep… oblivion… hell, even death would be good right now – anything just to stop this pain burning inside my chest.

And as if somebody actually heard my thoughts – or maybe I've screamed them out loud for the entire world to hear them – suddenly I felt warmth. And it wasn't the burning, aching, maddening fire from before either; it was nice, a good and peaceful warmth. Warmth that promised so much, I could have wept with happiness from that promise alone. And then I knew no more…

_CC_POV_

Seconds… minutes… days… nights… everything passed by without me even noticing it. I couldn't notice it. I didn't want to. Oblivion was too sweet of a temptress, one I couldn't and wouldn't ignore. It hurt a little less when she had her arms tightly wrapped around me. She didn't heal, or fix, or mend me… it wasn't a cure for the emptiness I felt inside; for the whole where she used to be… a long time ago, but it was something… something that somehow made it feel a little better, even if it was – and it sure was - temporary.

Was it a long time ago that I last held my Esme in my arms last?

Were those days and nights that passed around me, oblivious to me?

Were those seasons that changed when I stayed unchanged in my pain?

I couldn't tell anymore. I was numb… a stone… nothing at all and still it hurt.

It hurt so much that sometimes I wanted to crawl all the way to the center of the Earth and let the magma and nature run their course. I wanted simply to stop… stop being… stop hurting… stop everything.

I wanted to turn back the time and do what I didn't have the strength to do then – I wanted to die with her. Our ashes entwined for eternity, just how our lives – existences – should have been if that day never happened. I wanted to be there once more, see the flames and rush to them. Embrace them as one would a friend and let them consume me until I was nothing but ashes – like her. I couldn't… and even if I could do the impossible and turn the clock around I was still too much of a coward. I feared death and I feared it more than I yearned to have her once again by my side.

I missed her – her smile that used to light up my entire world; her eyes which I still loved more than anything in my pathetic little afterlife; her voice, the one I sometimes thought I could still hear whispering, murmuring, offering me even in death – true death – something of her, something that soothed and broke me at the same time.

I missed her… so much, I felt raw with needing her. I felt the agony of her absence so deep that I wondered how I could still be alive or un-dead, or whatever I was. The burning pain in my chest should have been enough to kill me. It wasn't.

I missed her, but time passed and as my numbness lessened, because somewhere along the way it lessened, I started to miss other things: the taste and feel of blood, I forgot how long it was since I last hunted; the sound of laughter and them… Seconds, or maybe ages later I started to yearn them… my family… my life… my children if just in venom and not flesh.

I wanted them back, because they left… hours or minutes after I've lost her they left; one by one, going their separate way, leaving me to my solitude. They left…

Edward was the first to go – too ashamed and heartbroken to stay even a second longer in a town that had taken so much from him: his mother, his friend and confident, his will, his restrain and humanity. I understood then… I don't know if I do still. Maybe it had been better for him, for all of us. Maybe it had been the cowardly or easy way out. I couldn't remember it well.

That was a lie.

I did remember, everything and quite well at that, but I simply chose to ignore it. Making up stories was better; it kept me from thinking of her… of them… of all that wasn't there anymore.

_BS_POV_

I woke up again, unable to see or move.

I seem to do that a lot lately. What was this, fifth or sixth time in a row? I couldn't understand it.

I could hear perfectly - hear the beeping and whooshing of machines all around me, hear the rustling of God knows what from God knows where, hear Charlie and Renee talking somewhere to my right in hushed whispers. One time I even heard them arguing, though I couldn't for the life of me hear what about – me, probably. I could feel too – light caresses and kisses, the sheets I was standing on and those that were covering me, the needles… the pain. But I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, see or move even an inch.

It was terrifying.

Was I even actually awake?

I didn't know… couldn't know, so just like the last five or six times I sighed – though no sound could be heard – and forced myself to fall back asleep.

_CC_POV_

Rosalie and Emmett left next – minutes or days after Edward, I didn't really know, I had already started losing track of time. They couldn't stay – missing Esme, seeing me, Edward's absence… It was too much, so without even packing or saying 'good bye' – or maybe they said it but again I just chose to ignore that too – they left. One second they were there, by my side, the next… nowhere.

Did I blame them for leaving?

Yes and later on, no. At first I simply couldn't understand how loving her made them leave the one place, that still had memories of her life… and then I started wondering why I didn't do the same – why I didn't leave just like they did. It hurt too much to be here and yet I didn't – couldn't – leave.

_BS_POV_

If the pain was any indication, my prayers had been listened – I was dying, I was sure of it, because living wasn't supposed to be like this. Living was supposed to be good and fun and you were supposed to feel alive while doing it. I didn't feel alive and it sure as hell wasn't good, fun or anything like it. It was agony. It was hell. It was worse than anything anybody could endure and it was all mine.

God, how I wanted to die!

I wanted it done with. I couldn't – wouldn't – do it anymore and still they wouldn't let me. Every time I thought I was close – close enough to feel it, taste it, pray for it with all I had left in me – they, those fucking tormentors in doctors clothes, would bring me back.

It was too much! Much too much and I couldn't do it…

Please… somebody… anybody… just let me die.

_CC_POV_

Alice and Japer stood by the longest. I can't really say in any sort of measurements how much, but it was the longest. Maybe minutes… maybe days… maybe even years… I didn't know and truly cared too little about it. They left too and that was all that I knew… all that I actually cared for.

And when they left, when I was finally all alone with none of my family' shoulders to cry on, for the smallest of fractions of time I was actually happy… free. But the moment passed too quickly and then the sorrow and the pain came back even worse than before.

I was all alone, just like I was in the beginning… just like I still was now.

_BS_POV_

Three weeks, four days and 45 minutes…

That's how long it's been since I woke up. Almost an eternity when one – that would be me – stops to think I've been in a coma for close to six months.

I don't remember anything of what happened. They had to tell me everything. Hell I didn't even remember moving to Forks, but after speaking with Renee for a while I kind of understood why I did it – she needed her freedom to be with Phil without constantly dragging me along or worrying about me, and I needed a home. I wasn't happy about it, especially since Charlie and the doctors explained that my accident had happened in Forks, but I understood it and accepted it.

It was nice to see me and Charlie seemed to get along better – apparently moving in with him, even if it was for just a few days had improved our relationship, like nothing ever managed to. I mean, the man had cried for crying out loud – pun very much intended – when he told me about the accident. I could get used to this – our new father/daughter thing.

What I couldn't get used to was my accident. I simply couldn't wrap my head around it – a car, ice, some mysterious boy I remembered nothing of saving me, a freaking whole in my stomach and then losing so much: my memory, time of my life while in a coma, my health. Yeah, it was just too much to wrap anything around it let alone my head.

I was lucky, Dr. Zamir kept on reminding me. I was alive and other than the loss of memory they all assured me was temporary there was no brain damage to speak of.

Well, we would just have to agree to disagree and talk later when Dr. Zamir walked in my shoes for a while – not that I wished it upon him, God forbid, but the man had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't know me, or how I felt, and he sure as hell shouldn't be telling me to feel happy, because I was lucky. I wasn't lucky. Bella Swan wasn't fucking lucky and he should just keep his opinion to himself.

Thank God I was being discharged in just a few hours. One more day of this and I would've taken the first blunt object I would reach and whack him over the head. Charlie would have hated it… Renee would have loved it… and would have felt avenged. Maybe I could still do it when he comes for my final checkup – now that's a thought.

_CC_POV_

My hand reached for something and before I knew it light, greenish blue light, shone from the small screen before me. For the first time in God knew how many days, months, years there was light… and then… just as my mind started to wonder why, of why, did I turn on my phone, I saw it… Black on blue, in the corner of the small screen, taunting me – the date:

_24__th__ of January 2005_

A year…

Twelve months…

More days than I wanted to admit to…

It was a year later and I didn't even know it… or maybe I did. It was the first time that I actually noticed the little device plugged in next to the couch and if the date was correct, which I had no reason to doubt, I've been sitting next to it for almost a year now.

Maybe I knew.

Maybe a part of me knew at least.

Maybe it was instinct or just a coincidence.

I didn't know… I didn't really want to know, not when for the first time in, apparently a year, I finally had a purpose, if only for the next hours. I needed to see her… I needed to mourn her on this day and if the fact that the little contraption in my hand was buzzing like mad was any indication, I wasn't the only one.

I don't know who was calling… maybe Alice… maybe Edward… It didn't matter. They were calling and that was enough.

I smiled for them, even knowing neither they nor nobody will see it and I was so stunned that for a second – or maybe a lifetime – I simply stood, staring at nothing at all and contemplating that I could still, after all the hurt and agony and death, smile.

I don't really know when I took the phone out of the plug, when I lifted it to my ear, or even when I pressed the button to start the call, but suddenly a bell like voice was speaking on the other end of the line and I was smiling again, a smile so big I knew had I been human my facial muscles would have ached from the strain.

I listened to the voice, ignoring the words and savoring the first real moment of tranquility I felt in much too long of a time. It was heaven… pure heaven and I rejoiced it.

God, how I missed them… her… my daughter… my beautiful little Alice!

I thought that I've missed her presence before, but now… now I really understood that until this second in time, until this instant when everything that surrounded me was her voice, I haven't actually missed her at all. Yes, I regretted her absence and yes I yearned for her presence, but until know I just didn't know how much I truly ached for her… for them… for my children.

I wanted them back… right now… right here... beside me… with me. I needed them.

"Carlisle?!"

My name in her voice brought me back and I wondered why she sounded so uncertain… so sad. Was she not well? Physically I knew she was. She was a vampire after all, but emotionally… I had no way of knowing – what she still mourning? Was there something else?

"Carlisle?!"

"Yes…"

My voice made me pause. I hadn't heard it in so long that somehow I expected it to be different – rough from lack of use or maybe from the pain and fire that I was suddenly aware was ripping my throat in half. It wasn't. Nothing had changed. It was still my voice, my un-human, eternal voice.

"Are you okay?"

I stopped contemplating my voice and turned to her question.

Was I okay?

_BS_POV_

Home sweet home… finally. If I thought physical therapy was bad, I never actually knew what school was – not until today anyway.

My first week of school and I already hated it already.

They all thought I was some kind of rich little snob because I never got to finish my junior year and still I was registered as a senior – daddy's influence with the school, no doubt – and I thought that 99 percent of them couldn't wipe their own asses with a road map. It was miserable – I was miserable – and if that wasn't enough, Charlie and Renee took turns dropping me off and picking me up after school every single fucking day.

Was there anything more degrading than that?

Not in my current state of mind there wasn't. Not when I had to cook dinner for two little babies – Renee and Charlie – who didn't even try to play well with each other, ask my mother – MY MOTHER – to help with my shower and do a double biology and chemistry paper, all before the painkillers I haven't yet taken but will take, started to kick in about two to three hours.

Yeah… degrading, miserable fucking life and then some… What did I do to deserve this?

_CC_POV_

No I wasn't okay! And right now I felt as if I would probably never be, though if I were to say as much Alice would surely contradict me. I couldn't bear contradictions right now… maybe in time. Maybe in time I would be okay…. Alice sure thought so – had seen so; had told me so – so maybe in time… someday… I would be okay. I wanted to believe that – wanted it and hating myself for it at the same time. Was I being unfaithful to Esme, for craving to be okay, for wanting to stop mourning someday? I didn't know… I hopped not!

"I will be," I whispered knowing she would hear me no matter how soft the words were.

"Yes… you will!"

There was silence after that… from her… form me… both probably contemplating that future she had long ago seen. I knew I was. For the first time in a year I was actually thinking about it.

Accepting it?

Not yet…

Considering it?

Maybe...

Letting myself think of it?

Definitely…

It was a long overdue thought as it was - a year long overdue thought. I might have even forgotten about it for a time, but now… now I could remember.

_"How… your fucking Little Freak, that's how." Japer growled, but Edward paid him no mind. "She… she… had a vision and," - his eyes shifted from Jasper to me and just beyond the beast that was still controlling him I saw humanity in the form of so much remorse I felt my breath – something I haven't needed in centuries – leave me completely breathless – "… I couldn't do that to you!"_

_I started; just stared. _

_I couldn't find the words I needed to reassure him that I wasn't disappointed. Hell, if my heart wouldn't have been so heavy for Esme right now, I would have probably whooped with pride. He had done it… the impossible. He had had her in his arms, vulnerable and opened and still he'd stopped. _

_How could I not be proud? How could I not love him in that instant more than I ever loved him in his entire life? How could I not be awed? _

_God, I wanted to crawl at his feet and ask him to teach me; to be my mentor, because no matter how powerful my resistance was, or how accustomed to blood I had become I would never – ever – be able to stop feeding from my singer. I didn't think anybody could and yet, here I was staring into the eyes of the one man – one vampire – that could and did. _

_He should be proud too. He should be happy and overjoyed. _

_So why wasn't he? Why was he so tormented? Did he want to go back for her? Was letting her go that hard that even now he still felt the effects? Was it only a reaction to the blood he still had on him? _

_I knew I could barely stand the smell of it and he was actually wearing it as opposed to me. I almost wanted to forget about all and go after her, so for him it must be… _

_"… I couldn't take her away from you too."_

_I stopped listening… thinking… or even functioning after that. _

_Words were spoken. I was sure of that, I could see Edward's lips moving, but I heard nothing. It was as if all sound had been sucked out of the world with those words that had absolutely no meaning to me. _

_I could only see Esme's beautiful face, hear her perfect voice, her breathtaking smile and miss it... all of it… every simple little bit of it… of her… There was nothing else but her and her absence. I couldn't even feel the pride I felt just a second ago or the shock at hearing Edward's words. I only felt sorrow and loneliness and pain and… _

_"… Alice saw it…"_

_I started to hear words again. They made no sense, but I heard them – fragments of sentences and dialogs that I understood nothing of and cared even less for. _

_"… that's impossible. Esme was…"_

_Edward's lips kept moving and I was sure that if I was to look, Rosalie and Jasper's would be too. I didn't care to look. _

_"… I saw it…"_

_"… been wrong before, and besides aren't you two always telling us the future isn't written in stone…"_

_"… but she is…"_

_"… no…"_

_"… Rosalie…"_

_"No – that pitiful little human isn't his mate… who knows, maybe she dies after all…"_

That was the first time I heard about Alice's vision – though heard was a little of a strong word; some words reached me, without me hearing them. Well, my brain heard them alright; knew them by heart, but ignored them and by the time Alice and Jasper decided to leave me too, I forgot completely about them.

That was until, just before walking out the door, Alice came to kiss me 'good bye' and whispered in my ear:

_"Grieve all you need Carlisle, but go to her even if you feel you don't deserve to. She needs you… and you will need her. Be happy!"_

And that was the last I heard of it… of her… this other her that wasn't Esme and still, somehow, was destined to be what Esme had been for so long. No, she wouldn't be what Esme was… nobody could be as her… but, according to Alice, she would be something eventually…

Was this other her – I couldn't say her name, not yet – even alive?

Last I knew she was dying… Edward had almost killed her…

Was she even here if she were still alive? Forks had to have too many nightmarish memories. Maybe she did what I couldn't and left; left back to Phoenix to her mom or just left on her own. Left this place. That would have been what my human self would have done in her place – left and never look back.

Was Forks even there anymore? For all I knew it had been whipped out in the year I was gone. Would I have known? Would I have cared… about Forks… about her?

I don't think I would or could have. They hadn't mattered... she hadn't mattered… nobody did.

"You'll find her…"

The confidence in the voice from the other end of the line made me draw a completely useless breath. At least she, that other her in my life – or that will be in my life, if I would ever be able to have her there – was still alive. That was a relief. No, I wasn't ready for her, maybe I would never be, but she deserved better that death and I was grateful to the heaven above she still had a life to live.

"… she'll be an extraordinary vampire one day…"

"Alice…"

The warning in my tone was apparently lost on her, because she kept on rambling and, no matter how hard I wanted to scold her for it, I couldn't stop smiling as the sound of her voice flew from the small device and spread all around the room. Her words didn't matter as much as hearing her voice did.

"… and my best friend, you know. She'll love you Carlisle…"

"Alice…"

"… and you'll love her too... one day."

"Alice…"

"No, just let me finish this and then I promise I'll shut up about it."

"Alice!"

"I promise…"

I drew a deep breath, cursing inwardly almost immediately as the pain and scolding fire in my throat started again. "Fine… but hurry up… I…"

"…need to hunt. Yes, I know… You really shouldn't have waited this long…"

"Alice!"

"… but who am I to judge, right?" she chuckled. " Anyway… quick… right! Let her in Carlisle – I'm not saying to do it now or tomorrow or even soon. But someday. She needs you just as much as you need her – just let her in, one step at a time. You'll not regret this. Trust me?"

"I do," I acknowledged and I did, I truly did. Never bet on Alice – I wasn't a fool; I was mourning yes, but not a fool.

"Then trust her too!"

"Fine… I'll trust her, whatever that means."

"Perfect, now onto other quick stuff. Jazz and me… we're heading home and will be there in a couple of hours. Wait for us, okay? We'll go see Esme together?!"

I sighed, "Okay!"

"Super… Now, young man, get your ass out of the couch and that house and go gather some mountain lions and feed. I don't want to see a speck of black in your eyes when we arrive. Is that clear?"

I chucked – what an odd sound to make after such a long time – and getting off 'my ass' as Alice so eloquently put it I started for the door, already scanning my surrounding for prey. "Sure thing mother…"

"That's my boy," she laughed and the sound reverberated long after the line disconnected off everything around me – the house, the trees, the ground and sky – making me wonder how it was that I survived for so long without that wonderful, wonderful sound. I seemed almost like an abomination to not have it around.

But I will and soon, because Alice… my wonderful, brilliant, hyperactive, psychic, beautiful Alice… was coming back and she was bringing Jasper with her.

_BS_POV_

January 24th… The anniversary of a day I couldn't remember.

Why was I even celebrating it?

Oh, yeah, because Charlie wants to mark somehow the day I didn't die. I didn't. It was the day that turned my life upside down, righted it and then turned upside down again. A day I apparently forgot and now desperately wanted to forget about.

But if dad wanted to celebrate, I gave his exactly that… a celebration – dinner at the diner, my treat. We didn't talk that much – the 'how was your day' getting old real fast after the second time I answered it – until suddenly Charlie, whose eyes had been on the window for the last few minutes, took a deep breath, shook his head once as if to clear it and then gasped.

"They're back!"

"Who?"

"The Cullens…"

* * *

_**TBC...**_

* * *

_There's no update timeline, but I'll try to post at least one chapter each month!_

___I have no Beta reader and I'm not a native English speaker so if you happen to find any mistakes (which I'm sure you will) either ignore them or point the out to me so I can make the necessary corrections._

_**And... by the way... is anybody interested in beta-reading this story for me? Just say so in a review or PM if you are and I'll get in touch with you in no time at all.**_


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